


I Need Some Space

by misha906 (BoopPhysics)



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18874288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoopPhysics/pseuds/misha906
Summary: Danny Hebert finds love again, and Taylor is ecstatic for him, and now a whole half of another family moves in under the Hebert roof. Taylor thinks Samantha Biron is great for her father, the one she's worried about is her young daughter, Missy, who seems to be coming and going at all times of the day.





	1. Chapter 1

It was really weird having a second bed in her bedroom. 

 

Taylor stared at it from across the room, sitting on top of her own. It was the same size as hers; a twin sized mattress, covered in an Alexandria print bedsheet, with an assortment of boxes laid at its feet. A young girl was sorting through them, rummaging and tossing around bits of clothing, accessories, and Taylor thought she spotted a figurine or two from the PRT gift shop. Eventually, the girl pulled out a ragged, pink blanket from one of the boxes and flopped into bed. Taylor raised an eyebrow at the mess on the floor, but decided to ignore it for tonight. She pulled her own covers up over her shoulders and reached over to turn off her lamp. 

 

“I don’t like you,” the other girl’s voice was muffled, presumably because she was facing the wall. 

 

Taylor sighed. “I know.” 

 

“I don’t like your dad, either.” 

 

The lamp turned off with a click. “I know.” 

 

“I’m not calling you my sister.” 

 

Taylor placed her glasses on her bed stand and shut her eyes. “That’s fine.” 

 

“I’m only here because my mom is forcing me to be.” 

 

“Okay.” 

 

“I’d rather be anywhere else.”

 

“I understand.” 

 

“I’d rather have my real dad.” 

 

Taylor turned to face the ceiling. “And I’d rather have my real mom, but I can’t, because she’s dead. My dad is happy with yours though, and I’m pretty sure she’s happy with him, so I’m not going to throw a tantrum about it, because they deserve to be happy too.”

 

The stretch of silence that followed lasted so long Taylor thought Missy fell asleep. 

 

“...I still don’t like you.”

 

“I heard you the first time. Go to sleep, Missy.”

 

Taylor waited until she heard the girl’s light snores before nodding off to sleep herself.

\--

It was also really weird having two additional people live in her house. 

 

The next morning Taylor stumbled towards the bathroom to initiate her morning routine, but was confounded when she found the rickety brown door locked. Taylor was confused. Her dad’s routine was usually done by 7 a.m. It’s why she set her alarm for 7:05, so she could brush her teeth and shower, and they’d have breakfast at 7:15 before heading out the door at 7:30 to get to school at 8:00. 

 

Taylor knocked on the door. 

 

“Just a minute,” a woman’s voice called, and Taylor nearly fell over in surprise. It took her brain a moment to catch up.

 

Right.

 

Samantha. Samantha was in the bathroom. Because she moved in. With dad. A girlfriend. Her dad’s girlfriend, that’s who was in the bathroom. She was in the bathroom because she was living in their house. That’s why the bathroom was locked. Taylor stared at the door for a few seconds before blearily walking back to her room. 

 

A room that she was  _ sharing  _ with someone now. A fact she only remembered when she ended up tripping over a cardboard box in the doorway and sprawling across the carpeted floor. Taylor pulled herself up and treated the mess on the floor with a glare. The glare turned itself to the bundle of blankets atop the new bed in her room when she remembered who had put it there. 

 

“Missy,” Taylor said. The bundle did not stir. Taylor pursed her lips in annoyance. She was  _ not _ going to clean this mess up.  

 

“Missy,” she tried raising her voice. The bundle did not stir. 

 

“Missy!” this time Taylor yelled, and jabbed the swathe of blankets with a finger. That finally got a reaction. 

 

The reaction was a small leg lashing out from underneath the covers that caught Taylor in the stomach and bowled her over. 

 

“Don’t yell,” came Missy’s muffled voice. Taylor got up with a growl.

 

“Get up!” she hissed in a tone that brook no argument while nursing her stomach. This kid kicked something fierce. 

 

“Don’t have school today...co-op program,” Missy mumbled. 

 

“I don’t care! Get up and pick up your stuff!”

 

A disheveled blonde head poked its way out of the nest of covers and pillows. Its glazed green eyes meandered slowly until it found Taylor’s, which sharpened them to alertness.

 

“What do you want?” Missy asked frostily. 

 

Taylor pointed to the mess strewn across  _ her _ bedroom. “Pick up your stuff.” 

 

Missy’s eyes flickered from Taylor’s face to the floor, and back again. She dragged the covers back over her head. “No.” 

 

Taylor stood flabbergasted. She opened her mouth. She found no words. She closed her mouth. She left the room. 

\--

“Taylor, it’ll be alright, she just needs some time to adjust.” 

 

The kitchen was filled with the smells and sounds of fresh coffee and clicking cutlery. It was just Taylor and Danny in the kitchen; Samantha had taken Missy to her job after eating a quick and small breakfast. How that devil child managed to get a job, Taylor had no idea. She speared a piece of bacon with her fork and bit into it angrily. 

 

“While she’s adjusting, it’s  _ my  _ room that’s becoming a minefield,” she grumbled. “I already tripped over her stuff twice this morning, and she refused to clean it up!”

 

“I’ll talk to Samantha about it, Taylor,” Danny sighed. Taylor frowned and set her fork down.

 

“No,” she said. “No, it’s okay. It’s my problem anyways, you don’t need to drag Samantha into this. I’ll talk it out with Missy.”

 

“Are you sure?” Danny asked, sitting back down with a fresh mug of coffee. Taylor nodded. “Well, if you’re sure.” 

 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Taylor said, turning back to her breakfast. “It’ll be fine, Dad. Don’t worry about me.” 

 

“Alright, Taylor. I believe you.” Danny finished up his coffee the same time Taylor finished up her breakfast. “Ready to go?” 

 

Taylor quickly swallowed her last bite of eggs and shouldered her bag in the same motion. “Yeah.” 

\--

Perhaps the worst thing about having two more people living in her house was the fact that they would be  _ in _ the house when she came home. 

 

Taylor thought she’d be home alone, at least until Danny came home, so she threw open the front door with as much force as her frustrated frame could muster. The dark brown slab made a very satisfying and loud  _ thunk _ as it met the drywall of the hallway.

 

“What the f—hell was that?!” A very loud and shrill voice cried from the kitchen, followed by an admonishing “Missy!”. Taylor hurried to close the door as two matching heads of blonde hair poked their way around the kitchen door to check on the noise.

 

“Taylor?” Samantha asked in alarm as she took in Taylor’s drenched clothes and soiled backpack.

 

Taylor ducked her head and hurried towards the stairs. “Hi.” 

 

“Taylor, wait, what happened?” Samantha called after her.

 

“An accident,” Taylor called back. She hastened towards the sanctuary of her room and shut the door behind her to begin changing into a set of clean clothes. A t-shirt was halfway over her shoulder when the door creaked open, eliciting a panicked screech.

 

“Sorry, sorry!” Missy squeaked. “I just wanted to make sure that you were—”

 

“Close the door!” Taylor bellowed. Miss quickly eased it shut. Taylor hurried to pull on the rest of her clothes.

 

“Are you okay?” Missy’s muffled voice called from behind the door. 

 

“I’m fine,” Taylor said, bundling up her dirty clothes to stuff into her backpack. 

 

“What happened?” 

 

“It’s none of your business.” 

 

“Are you sure, Taylor? Do you need—”

 

“I said it’s none of your business,” Taylor growled. She zipped her backpack closed over her soiled clothing, threw the bedroom door open, and shoved past Missy down the stairs.  

 

“Fine!” Missy called after her. “It’s none of my business, see if I care!” 

\--

Dinner was awkward. 

 

Part of it was definitely Samantha’s fault, in Taylor’s opinion. There was no reason for her to corner Taylor in the bathroom and demand to know why she came home with her clothes ruined when she finally left her room; all that did was engage Taylor in one of the most awkward conversations of her life. Another part was definitely Missy’s fault, who threw a loud tantrum and almost followed Taylor into the basement. It wasn’t until she locked the basement door and Samantha had intervened that that young girl’s yelling died down. 

 

Taylor tried to ignore the silent tension building in her small, and now unfamiliar kitchen, electing to focus on the piece of chicken and pile of string beans on her plate in an attempt to puzzle out her current predicament. The addition of two people at the dining table was hard enough to deal with, but the introduction of a well prepared meal for dinner was practically unnerving. 

 

“Taylor, could you pass the salt, please?” Danny’s voice did little against the teflon wall of silence stretching in the kitchen, but Taylor took the reprieve for what it was worth and passed the small glass cylinder of seasoning. 

 

“Thank you,” Danny said. 

 

“Mm,” Taylor replied. 

 

“So, Taylor, how was your day today?” Samantha interjected, obliterating any trace of Hebert household normalcy. 

 

Taylor carefully set the salt shaker back in its place, taking the time to let her eyes roam over the other people sitting around her, trying to gauge the mood at the table. Samantha was looking at her expectantly, Missy was busy tapping away at her phone, and Dad…

 

Dad was looking at his food, putting bite after bite in his mouth, just like he always did. Did he know? Did Samantha tell him? Did he put two and two together, after spotting her messy bag? Maybe. Maybe not. Taylor couldn’t tell, so Taylor defaulted to her standard.

 

“It was fine,” she lied. 

 

The meal lulled, a moment of silence broke free from the tapping of cutlery and the sound of mastication after her lie, like it was expecting her lie and was now condemning her for it. It felt suffocating. 

 

“...That's good to hear,” Samantha said. 

 

The click of a knife against a plate consumed that momentary silence. Dinner resumed with no further questions. 


	2. Chapter 2

Samantha knew that Missy was angry.

 

She knew her daughter went to sleep last night angry, that she woke up angry, and now she going to work angry. 

 

She wasn’t entirely sure exactly what Missy was angry at, for the number of topics exceed her wildest imaginations, but she could definitely make a very educated guess about a round dozen of them.

 

“I hate it here,” she said to her mom as soon as the front door of the Hebert house was closed behind them. 

 

It never stopped with Missy. She hated the paint, she hated the smell, she hated her room and her bed and that rotting front porch and Danny and Taylor and all the rest of the everything. Samantha just sighed and opened the door to their small green car to let her daughter climb in the back. 

 

“Just give them a chance, Missy, please. Did you remember your badge?” the woman asked. Missy flashed the laminated card from its lanyard in her pocket. Her mom nodded in acknowledgement and climbed into the driver’s seat. The sedan started with a quiet growl, and Missy watched as the unfamiliar street begin to pass by.

 

“I did give them a chance. They suck,” Missy grumbled, folding her arms. 

 

“We’ve been there for two days,” her mom countered. 

 

“And both days sucked.” 

 

Samantha sighed and resisted the urge to drop her forehead against the steering wheel. Instead she took a deep breath, and took the wrong turn off the street. “Oh, damn.” 

 

“I just don’t know why we have to  _ live _ there,” Missy ignored the expletive from her mom’s mouth. She’s heard much worse, not that she’d let her mom know that. “We have a house.” 

 

Yes, they had a house. It was a nice house too, in one of the nicer suburbs just a scant few blocks out of downtown. A nice big brownstone, with a large porch and lawn, all surrounded by a neat cobblestone ledge. It was a fantastic house, and Samantha loved it dearly. She even remembered when she bought it with Robert. 

 

That brought the car to a halt. Thankfully, Samantha could blame it on the garbage truck. Which was several houses in front of where she stopped. She took her foot off the brake and let the car meander to a less conspicuous distance.

 

“We already talked about this, Missy,” Samantha said, laboring to keep her voice even. 

 

“Dad said sorry. You said sorry. It was fine. You guys were fine.” That line. It was always that line. There was some truth to it. They were fine. Mostly. The pair of them left on decent terms, for a certain definition of the word. It always could have been worse. The shouting could have escalated, the passive aggression could have turned more active, and Lord knows what would have happened then. 

 

The garbage truck turned the corner, forcing Samantha to turn her attention back to the road and resume their commute. Eventually the derelict warehouses and homes gave way to high rises and big billboards, and once they got onto the highway, even the shimmering Protectorate HQ was visible just off the shore. 

 

“We’re just...trying something new, okay, Missy?” Samantha said. “New house. New neighborhood. New faces. Breath of fresh air.” 

 

“But I liked the old house, in the old neighborhood, with the old faces. And the same air.” 

 

Samantha gripped the steering wheel tighter. 

 

_ I do too _ , she wanted to tell her daughter. She loved that old house, with the spotless sidewalks of the cul-de-sac, and the Jenkins from next door and the Schmidts from down the street. The problem was that she also remembered painting that old house with Robert, she remembered those evening walks around the neighborhood where she clung to Robert’s arm, and every time she saw the Jenkins out on a walk she’d be reminded of the banana bread she and Robert baked together to give to them. 

 

But how to explain to a twelve year old that she bought and built for their family felt more like a prison than a home? How it felt like a reminder of all the shame and mistakes she’d ever made in her life piled into a lonely, miserable, empty wooden box?

 

Before Samantha could begin to decide on the answer to that question, the PRT building pulled into view, in all of its stoney-grey glory. She sighed and pulled into one of the nondescript parking lots nearby. The gates automatically opened when they detected her car. 

 

“One month, okay?” It was always awkward, having to bargain with her daughter. Whatever happened to the days where she would just listen to her? “Please. Try one month. For me?” 

 

Samantha looked in the rear view mirror. Missy was adamantly avoiding her eyes, ensuring her head was tilted away, offering no response. Well, at least there wasn’t direct hostility. That was about as good as she could get, these days.

 

“Do you need me to walk you in?” she asked her daughter. 

 

“It’s fine,” Missy said, shoving the door open snatching her backpack out of the seat. 

 

“Are you sure?” Samantha asked, turning off the car. “It’ll be no trouble, I can get in a few minutes late.” 

 

“I said it’s fine, mom.” Samantha was treated to a bright red and blue backpack walking away briskly before she even managed to open the car door.

 

She called after her daughter. “Stay safe!” 

 

The words used to be an endearing thing to say to her every morning. Her own darling superhero, off to fight the good fight against the dastardly villains of the city. Nowadays it felt like a fervent prayer. She watched her daughter disappear into the elevator without so much as a wave goodbye. Samantha sighed and put the car into gear. 

 

\--

 

Halloway Insurance wasn’t the biggest of its kind in town, but it certainly was one of the meanest. It was overworked, understaffed, and all operations were crammed into a building that was rated to have occupancy half its size. The office was already abuzz with activity when Samantha pushed through the dirty glass doors. The Biron matriarch spared no seconds in hurrying to her discordant desk scurried away in a dusty corner. Her purse crammed its way between a stack of files and her computer the same time a pen made its way into her hand. With a quick smile and a nod at her boss, Samantha got to work. 

 

“No, Mrs. Liang, that’s not why the amount due has increased, it increased because of your new policy. Yes, that one. No, you can’t keep paying the old premium, because your coverage has increased, your entire house along with any personal possessions are now insur—” Samantha sighed as a dial tone buzzed in her ear. She put her phone down and rubbed at her tired eyes, her early morning smile vaporized like the morning dew. 

 

A cup of coffee slid across her messy table into her field of view, prompting Samantha to look up. Danny smiled at her, an identical paper cup in his own hands. 

 

“Hey,” Samantha smiled, standing and planting a small kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek while graciously accepting the offered caffeine infusion.

 

Danny Hebert was like a rock, she realized. 

 

Not physically; the man was well into middle age, if anything he was physically the opposite of a rock, with his reedy frame, large eyes, and thinning hair. No, Danny Hebert was a rock in other ways. He was reliable. Caring. Kind. Those were the traits that initially attracted Samantha to him when they met at the Dockworker’s Association. A routine business interaction that slowly blossomed into their current relationship as they both commiserated over long hours, absent spouses, and increasingly disconnected daughters. 

 

“Hey,” Danny returned. “Busy morning?” 

 

Samantha groaned into her cup of coffee. “You have no idea. How about you?” 

 

He shrugged. “Same old, same old. You know how it is at the DA.” 

 

She did know. She’d been selling insurance to the aging and nearing decrepit association for years. Same old usually implied there wasn’t much to do. 

 

“Well, in that case, want to get lunch?” Samantha asked, checking the clock. Half past one. Just one client caused her to be over an hour late for her lunch break.

 

“It’s why I’m here,” Danny said, sweeping his hand towards the door and dipping his body in a slight bow. “Ladies first.” 

 

\--

 

Valentini’s was one of the dozens of identical self-declared Italian ristorantes spread throughout Brockton Bay. Its exterior sported a dirty brick front, frosted windows, and flickering neon signs advertising pizza and subs while its interior was filled with rows of cheap aluminum tables and chairs. Its menu was written on large chalkboards hung high above the counter, and its halogen lights glowed like that haven’t been replaced since the business was founded, and Samantha liked eating here far more than she’d like to admit. 

 

She took another bite out of a very greasy slice of pizza and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin while she chewed. 

 

“So, is Missy settling in well?” Danny asked, taking a much slower approach to his simple salad. 

 

Well, wasn’t that a question. Samantha took her time swallowing her bite of pizza to search for the answer.

 

“She’s...adjusting,” was the answer she finally decided on. It was the best she could come up with on the spot. Neutral. Non-offensive. Not liable to ruin the already tenuous balance at home. “It’s a big change for her. She just needs some time.” 

 

Danny nodded sagely. “I understand.” 

 

_ You really don’t,  _ Samantha thought. Outwardly she nodded along. 

 

“Well, I think Taylor could also help her along, although—”

 

Samantha arched an eyebrow as her boyfriend cut himself off. “Although?”

 

Danny shook his head and took a drink of water. “Nothing, it’s nothing. I just...I think Taylor also needs some time to adjust, it’s not a small thing for her, either.”

 

Samantha nodded. “I understand.” 

 

The two of them picked at their food in silence, food forgotten as their minds were consumed with worry about both their children and their relationship. 

 

“Should we get you back to the office?” Danny was the first to break the silence, avoiding the potential troubling conversation by deftly avoiding it.

 

“Yeah, we should,” Samantha said, standing and depositing her empty paper plate in the trash. She took Danny’s offered hand and let him walk her back out to his aging truck. 

 

It wasn’t until she was safely ensconced back in her desk did she realize that neither of them truly had any clue what to do with their daughters.


	3. Chapter 3

Missy felt someone coming up the stairs. 

 

It was the way the stairwell had to twist back ever so slightly to the right, control over its shape and contour wrested from her as a live human being ascended the rickety steps, like something crawling over the back of her hand. 

 

It couldn’t be mom, she was still at work, and so was Mr. Hebert. That meant it had to be Taylor. With a gentle flex of her powers, Missy relaxed her hold on the Heberts’ house.

 

The room shifted; floorboards returning to their original size and the beds slowly inching towards each other as reality asserted itself over her previously spacious lounge. Missy just managed to stop a few binders from falling onto the floor as the desk inched together, limiting her workspace. The wall of an adjacent bookshelf zoomed towards her head, stopping gently as it met the desk, and finally her chair collapsed in on itself underneath her, removing her legroom. 

 

A click announced the opening door right as the vestigial effects of Missy’s power wore off and everything similarly clicked back into its proper place. The adolescent turned around to watch her...to watch Taylor walk through the door. She had a slight smile as she entered, running a hand over what looked to be an old lunch box. The smile disappeared into a face of stoney neutrality when she realized she wasn’t alone in the room. 

 

“...Hi, Missy,” she greeted her with the warmth of an icicle. 

 

“Hi,” Missy returned, turning back to her homework. Weirdo. Who smiles at a lunch box? 

 

She heard the brunette stuff the lunchbox inside her bag and then kick the whole thing under her bed before settling down on her half of their desk with her own homework, pulling up another chair to the adjacent end of their tiny shared desk. For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of pens and pencils quietly scratching at paper while the two girls studiously ignored each other. A syncopated rhythm emerged, Taylor would take her pen off her notebook just a half second after Missy put her pencil on a worksheet, and vice versa. This ensured that while no words were exchanged, there was always some kind of sound filling the small, cramped room. It put the young heroine at ease.

 

Missy was almost done with her worksheet on To Kill A Mockingbird when Taylor ruined their unspoken vow of silence.

 

“Hey.” Her attempt at communication was quiet, and for a second Missy thought she imagined the sound. It wasn’t until Taylor tapped her on the shoulder did she realize that she was being addressed. 

 

“Hey,” she tried again, in the same quiet voice. 

 

Missy turned to face her. “What?” 

 

“I wanted to…” Taylor seemed to struggle with her thoughts, biting her lip and breaking eye contact while fiddling with the pen in her hand. “I wanted to talk.” 

 

“...Okay,” Missy said, putting her own pencil down and turning her chair to face the lanky teen. “Talk about what?” 

 

“Talk about...this,” Taylor said, waving a hand over her head in an effort to contain the vast ‘this’ness she was trying to convey with the singular word. A Herculean effort for one syllable.

 

“What?” Missy asked, completely oblivious to the poor word’s efforts. 

 

“You know, this,” Taylor tried again, with the same gesture from the same hand over the same spot above her head. Missy just stared blankly, causing Taylor to sigh in annoyance. 

 

“Okay, okay,” she tried again after taking a deep breath to collect her thoughts. “Your mom said that we were going to try this living together thing for a month. To see how it works out between her and my dad. And us, I guess. Our families. Together.” 

 

Yes, that was true. One month, that’s all Missy had to stick it out for and not lock herself into the Ward’s base. One month, and Mom would take them home. One month. Four weeks. Thirty one days. Seven hundred and forty four hours. That’s all it was going to take. Missy nodded to show Taylor she heard her. 

 

“And that’s a long time for us to be acting...acting like…this,” Taylor finished lamely, looking supremely frustrated with her inability to articulate herself. “Like I’m your mortal enemy, or some evil stepsister, or—”

 

“You hardly fit the bill for an evil stepsister, you don’t look nearly menacing enough,” Missy interrupted, watching Taylor's face contort into confoundment as her train of thought derailed itself into a ravine. 

 

“That’s not the point I’m trying to make here,” Taylor said, confusedly trying to pick up the broken pieces of this particular mental venture. “I’m not  _ trying _ to be a menacing stepsister. I thought you said you didn’t want me to be your stepsister.” 

 

“True,” Missy replied, turning back to her homework. 

 

"I'm not trying to be your stepsister." Taylor repeated.

 

"I heard you."

 

“I really not.” 

 

“Okay.” 

 

“I just wanted to make sure that...” Taylor trailed off, causing Missy to stop pondering the machinations of Jem and Scout and lift her head. The older girl had taken her glasses off and was rubbing at its lenses, eyes more scrunched in contemplation than concentration. 

 

“Are you going to actually say anything, or are you just going to sit here and be awkward for the rest of the night, because I have homework to do,” Missy sat flatly. 

 

Taylor shook her head as if to clear her thoughts and square her shoulders as if to steel herself. 

 

“I wanted to make sure that we can be...amicable. As amicable as we can be with this current living arrangement.” 

 

“I am very amicable,” Missy said, having no idea what the word amicable meant. 

 

“Is that what you call it?” Taylor challenged.

 

Missy went quiet, giving Taylor the confidence to forge onwards. “I know you don’t like me, and that’s perfectly fine, but I want us both to at least try to keep up appearances. For our parents’ sake. We keep the arguing to a minimum, and let them be a couple, okay? Just...let’s just stay out of each other’s way? I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me. We’ll just...be here. Until the end of the month.” 

 

“Until the end of the month,” Missy agreed, nodding her head. That line was quickly becoming a mantra for her; one speaking of a promised land at the end of a slowly advancing tunnel. All she had to do was stick it out until the end of the month.

 

“So,” Taylor sounded very satisfied at Missy’s very non-committal answer. A slender hand made its way into her field of view. “Deal?” 

 

Missy pondered that hand in front of her for several long moments, weighing all the gives and takes of the deal, and came to the conclusion that weren’t many, if at all. A whole month of doing something she was already planning to do? And would similarly secure Taylor’s cooperation? As her mom explained to her once upon a time; this was a no-risk client, and only a fool wouldn’t sell to her. She reached out with trepidation. Taylor’s hand felt cold and rough to the touch.

 

“...Deal.”

 

\--

 

“And then she just shoves past me and tells me it’s none of my business!” Missy complained loudly from the couch, watching Dennis play some kind of video game on the lounge television. All Missy could see was a gun, shooting, and the occasional spray of blood.

 

“Mhm,” the redhead said absently, his focus entirely absorbed by glittering pixels and plastic joysticks. 

 

“And  _ then _ she just locks herself in the basement and refused to come out until dinner! She’s insufferable!”

 

“That sucks.”

 

“But then yesterday, she just walks into the room and wants to make nice all of a sudden! I don’t get it.” 

 

“Yup.” 

 

Missy folded her arms. “You’re not hearing me.”

 

“No, no, I am definitely hearing you, it’s hard not to hear you. I’m not listening to you, though.” 

 

That earned Dennis a playful punch in his arm. “Jerk.” 

 

“Hey, don’t mess up my aim now, I’ve almost beaten Chris’s high score,” he replied. Missy just sighed and continued to watch gore and bits spray across the screen while mentally grousing  about her living situation. She watched Dennis get two more levels in before some unseen foe killed his avatar, filling the screen with a bloody game over screen. He cried out in faux anguish and tossed his controller aside. “Dammit!” 

 

“Language,” Missy ordered.

 

“Sixty points. I was off by sixty points,” Dennis lamented, ignoring her.

 

“You’ll get over it.” 

 

A beep alerted the pair to an opening door. The pair of silver steel to the Wards’ lounge slid open, allowing Carlos admittance into their messy abode. Missy sat up. “Hey, Carlos.” 

 

“Hey,” he responded in kind. “What’s up?” 

 

“Nothing much, just listening to Missy complain about her mom’s new boyfriend and how much she hates him and his kid,” Dennis interjected before Missy could open her mouth. 

 

“I did  _ not  _ say that,” she defended herself, giving Dennis another punch on the arm.

 

“Ow, stop it you little menace. And you totally did, you spent like the last twenty minutes saying how much of a bitch your stepsister is.” 

 

“Language,” both Missy and Carlos said at the same time. Dennis threw his hands in the air in exasperation and moved towards the fridge. 

 

“And she is  _ not _ my stepsister,” Missy hissed, jabbing a finger in the redhead’s direction. “I don’t need a stepsister. I will  _ never _ have a stepsister.” 

 

“So what, you’re going to put yourself into the state’s care if your mom gets married to...what was his name, again? Tommy? Donnie? Johnny?” Dennis asked, extracting a can of Coke from the shared fridge and popping the tab. He made his way back to the couch and picked up the controller again. “Vaughny?”

 

“It’s Danny, and no, my mom’s not going to marry him,” Missy said, grabbing the sugary drink and taking a swig before setting it on a coaster so it wouldn’t ruin the coffee table. Some people had no manners, but not her. Mom taught her better than that.

 

“I mean...that’s not really up to you,” Carlos injected himself into the conversation. He settled into the console chair and booted up the massive machine. Screens flickered on and text feeds began to scroll. 

 

“I’ll make it up to me,” Missy spat venomously. That ended the conversation. Carlos shook his head and turned his attention back to the screen as Dennis picked up the controller and restarted the level. Soon sounds of digital combat and the clacking of keys busied the room. Missy leaned back into the couch.

 

“I’ll make it up to me,” she repeated, if only for her own benefit. Neither of her teammates heard her.


	4. Chapter 4

“They seem like good people.”

 

Danny Hebert has heard many lies in his lifetime. He’s heard lies long-planned and short-lived. He’s heard lies uttered with the strictest confidence and lies that wouldn’t fool a six year old. He’s heard lies spill from people in every walk of life. He’s lied with practiced ease to friends and family for many long years.

 

It still hurt him to his core to hear his daughter lie so brazenly on the phone.

 

For a brief second, he considered calling her out on it, demanding to know where exactly she was and who exactly she was with, or to demand that she come home right now, to bring down the temple of lies the pair of them had built since the accident, pretending that everything was fine. For that brief, cosmic second, Daniel Hebert wanted nothing more than for the strength of Samson to tear down those pillars.

 

But the moment passed, and the lie fluttered into the wind, both harmless and damning at the same time. Another salient brick being stacked on top that grew the precarious temple ever higher.

 

“Okay,” he lied back. “Stay safe. Have fun.”

 

“I will, dad, don’t worry about me.” A click followed by the sound of a dial tone announced Taylor hanging up. Danny sighed and hung the receiver back in its ancient cradle. He turned towards the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, but was met with the inquisitive face of one Missy Biron.

 

“Hey,” Danny tried to make the greeting sound bright and energetic. In truth it came out more like someone who didn’t know what to say but had to force some kind of sound out.

 

“...Hi,” Missy answered with the same tone and inflection one reserved for inanimate objects.

 

They stared at each other from across the doorway of the kitchen in several seconds of awkward silence, with Danny searching for something to say to his potential stepdaughter.

 

“I’m about to make dinner,” Danny finally said, jerking a thumb behind him. “Anything you want to have tonight?”

 

Missy shook her head.

 

“Okay, mac and cheese sound good?” he asked. Missy shrugged, a gesture that Danny took to mean ‘Sure’. Permission granted, he began to busy himself with laying out the ingredients of the meal.

 

Typically, there wouldn’t be much in the Hebert pantry, usually canned soups or boxed pasta, leftovers from a time when Danny found no energy to shop for groceries. Since Samantha moved in, though, they’d begun to stock the cabinets to achieve something resembling a larder, if only to at least make sure that something resembling a meal could be scraped together at any time. That meant at least fresh vegetables and a loaf of bread.

 

A plethora of colorful boxes began to assemble on the counter while an old pot filled with water began its lengthy journey to a hundred degrees centigrade on the stove. The old flower print apron found its way around his waist, and Danny busied himself with shredding cheese into a bowl and washing a colander full of veggies to be chopped into a salad. Missy clambered into one of the chairs at the dinner table to watch him work.

 

“Do you love my mom?” The sudden question startled Danny, causing him to fumble and drop the box of dried pasta he was examining. On reflex, the man kicked out with a foot, but instead of breaking the box’s fall and letting it clatter harmlessly to the ground, he ended up kicking it against the kitchen wall.

 

Danny winced and hurried to pick up the spilled pasta. “Sorry, one more time?”

 

“I said, do you love my mom?” Missy asked again. The spilled macaroni elbows found themselves collected onto a dustpan, and Danny considered his answer as he dumped it into the trash.

 

Wait a second, was he being interrogated by a twelve year old?

 

“Um. Yes?” he wagered. After the spilled macaroni had been safely disposed of, Danny moved on to salt the steadily heating pot of water and stir the seasoning in with a wooden spoon. The glass lid followed soon after.

 

“Is that an answer or a question?” Missy said. Danny raised an eyebrow. Wow, he really was being interrogated by a twelve year old. And somehow she sounded more menacing than some of the jobs he wrangled at the DAU.

 

Danny turned to face her. Missy was staring at him intensely, and didn’t so much as blink when he met her eyes. “That’s kind of a complicated question, Missy.”

 

“No it isn’t,” she responded firmly. “It’s a very simple yes or no one.”

 

The Hebert patriarch didn’t respond, electing to turn back to tend to his hearth. There were small bubbles forming all along the bottom of the pot, and steam was sure to follow before long. Danny began to measure out the flour, milk, and butter for the other half of the dish.

 

“Well, I guess the answer is that I certainly hope I love her,” he finally answered. “I did ask her to live with me.”

 

Silence reigned in the kitchen as Missy digested his answer, propping her head up on the table with her arms and idly swinging her legs. The water began to boil, so Danny uncovered the pot and deposited his pasta. The dried, floury elbows clicked and clacked as they flowed out of the cardboard box and into the bubbling pot. He gave the entire ensemble a vigorous stir before setting the lid back on.

 

“You still didn’t answer my question,” Missy said as another pot found its way over an open flame. Danny decided to wait for the heat of the stove to suffuse into the metal before putting in his stick of butter, so he turned back around to face Missy.

 

“It’s a complicated one, kiddo. I think I gave the best answer I can.”

 

“Don’t call me that.” The girl’s response was instantaneous. And venomous. Danny dipped his head in acknowledgement and turned back to the stove. The second pot was well and heated now, so he deposited his singular stick of butter, using the same wooden spoon he used for the macaroni to slowly spread it around the bottom of the pot.

 

“Why is it such a complicated question for you? It was really easy for my mom.” She was unrelenting.

 

“And what did she say?” Danny asked.

 

“She said yes.” The implied ‘duh’ following that sentence was palpable. Danny turned his attention to the now foamy butter and he began whisking in the tiny amount of flour into the pan while pouring in the milk to slowly form an off-white bechamel.

 

“My dad loves my mom,” Missy continued out of the blue.

 

Danny continued stirring the milk, flour, and butter mixture, making sure to squash out any lumps with the spoon and to ensure it hit his intended viscosity. “I’m sure he did.”

 

“ _Does_ ,” Missy corrected him.

 

Danny elected not to respond. He’d heard enough from Sam to know that that wasn’t true, but he also wasn’t about to just say that to the kid. Instead he gave his bechamel one final stir before lowering the heat and depositing his shredded cheese into the liquid.

 

“How cheesy do you like your mac?” he asked her, hoping to steer their conversation towards less awkward pastures.

 

“You still need to answer my question.” Alas, Missy decided that that wasn’t where she wanted to go today. Danny sighed inwardly and continued to stir in the shredded cheese. The liquid slowly thickened into something that resembled the ‘and cheese’ part of mac and cheese.

 

“I don’t think I can give you the answer you want me to,” Danny said truthfully. A glance at the macaroni told him the pasta was ready, so he lifted the pot and drained most of the liquid away, reserving just a bit in the bowl that previously held his shredded cheese

 

“Because you don’t love my mom.”

 

The drained pot went back over the flame, and Danny deposited a large pad of butter inside to begin melting it.

 

“That isn’t true,” he said, turning to face Missy again. “I would like to think I love your mom, Missy, but it isn’t as simple as that.”

 

Missy folded her arms, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense. You either love her or you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be dating.”

 

Danny shrugged and turned around to deposit the cooked pasta into the melted butter and began mixing it, making sure to add a sprinkle of salt and a few cracks of pepper.

 

“It’s not that simple,” he said.

 

“It _is_ ,” Missy insisted.

 

Instead of answering, Danny poured the pasta into a lightly oiled casserole pan, and then turned back to taste the cheese mixture. A little too soupy for his tastes, so the dwindling wedge of cheddar became acquainted with his small grater again. Eventually the sauce thickened to a consistency he was satisfied with, so Danny turned off the stove and poured the thick, cheesy mixture onto the macaroni and began to fold them together. Finally, a shower of breadcrumbs was snowed on top of the steaming mixture along with a smattering of parmesan and parsley.

 

Danny was actually quite happy with how it turned out until he realized he forgot to preheat the oven.

 

“Oh, damn,” he murmured, before giving Missy a guilty look.

 

“It’s okay, I’ve heard worse,” Missy said, having moved on to staring intently at the mac and cheese. “Why’d you put the coriander on top?”

 

“That’s parsley, actually,” Danny corrected her, glad that the girl seemed to be moving away from her previous line of questioning. He grabbed a glass off the shelf. “Do you want some water?”

 

“Sure,” Missy said, scooching herself off the wooden chair to get a better look at her dinner. “What’s the difference between coriander and parsley?”

 

“Coriander tastes like soap and parsley doesn’t,” Danny answered, handing her her glass of water. A twist of the knob started the ancient appliance’s long journey towards four hundred and twenty five degrees. Figuring he had the time, Danny moved on to mixing up a simple salad.

 

“Where did you learn how to cook? You’re a lot faster at this than my mom,” Missy changed tracks again as he made quick work of slicing up the lettuce, onions, carrots, and tomatoes and deposited them into a large bowl.

 

“My...wife and I used to do it a lot. She’d find old recipe books, I’d buy ingredients. We’d make a weekend out of it. Bake our own bread. Pickle our own veggies. Taylor used to love helping out, too,” Danny said wistfully, carefully wiping the edge of his knife with a finger to make sure he got every bit of vestigial salad. He wiped at his eyes with the apron as his eyes began to sting. Damnable onion.

 

“...Did you love her a lot? Taylor’s mom?” Missy’s next question was considerably more quiet than the rest of her line of questioning, almost hesitant in her tone of voice.

 

“I do,” Danny said.

 

The oven made a small noise as it hit its target temperature. Danny hefted the casserole dish with both hands and gently slid it onto a wire rack and then set the timer for fifteen minutes.

 

“Well,” he said, straightening. “That’s all set and done. Want to watch TV until your mom comes home and we can eat?”

 

“...Sure.”


	5. Chapter 5

Lisa was giving Taylor a very hard look. “What do you mean, no?” 

 

Taylor winced. “That’s not what I meant, I just meant that I can’t do  _ tomorrow _ . It’s not a good day.” 

 

“But the boss is expecting this job to be done tomorrow. Are you backing out already?” The implication of what Lisa meant was not lost on Taylor. Was this her way of backing out of the Undersiders, already? 

 

“No! No, not at all. It’s just. My dad has this thing tomorrow, and—” 

 

Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “A date? Really? That’s what you want to blow this off for?” 

 

“I think she’s right,” Brian interrupted with his rumbling bass. “Not about the date thing, but we need to think about this first. I don’t like the idea of robbing a bank, especially on this short notice. It’d bring a lot of unwanted heat to us.”

 

“She’s just scared,” Bitch sneered from where she was running a gnarled brush through one of her mangled dogs. 

 

“Look,” Taylor raised her voice, trying desperately to take control of the conversation before it devolved into angry insults. “Look, just give me one day, okay? I need to be there for this, my dad wants to make it a whole family thing, and I—”

 

“Want to be there for him. I get it. Well, I don’t actually get it; I understand, but the boss might not,” Lisa finished Taylor’s sentence for her as well as made the bigger obstacle clear. 

 

Taylor bit her lip and considered her options, looking at everywhere except Lisa’s eyes. It took her several minutes to reach a decision while Brian continued to argue with Lisa about why taking the job was a bad idea. At some point Lisa went to give the boss a call. Alec and Rachel continued to respectively play video games and groom dogs in the background while ignoring the entire thing.

 

“How about this,” the brunette finally interjected before the discourse could continue after Lisa stepped back out of her room. “We do this thing in two days. One day off for me to be with my family, and we go the next day. As a stipulation, I will go with whatever plan you come up with. I won’t complain, I won’t say anything. Whatever you say, goes. Sound fair?” 

 

“Sounds great, Friday at the bank it is,” Lisa chirped before Brian could open his mouth. He dropped his shoulders and sighed. 

 

“You better have a damn good plan for this, Lisa,” Brian grumbled as he realized he was being outvoted. 

 

Lisa’s grin spread to an unnaturally wide length. For some reason Taylor shivered. “Of course I do, fearless leader. Now, listen close, the boss wanted us to do a job at a very specific time, and I’ve managed to get him to delay it by one day because of Taylor, which throws a spanner in the works, considering the Protectorate was going to be out of town on Thursday, but on the other hand…”

 

\--

 

Missy was playing Bejeweled on her phone when Dean popped his head into her makeshift room in the PRT Headquarters. “Hey, Missy?” 

 

“Yeah?” Missy said, hurriedly shoving her phone beneath her makeshift swathe of blankets that dominated her entire bed. She tried to subtly straighten her shirt and jeans as she leapt to attention, hoping he didn’t notice the half empty bag of chips that was on her bed.

 

“Would it be possible for me to switch my afternoon patrol with yours tomorrow? I’ve got a thing,” Dean asked ruefully, running a hand through his sandy-blonde hair. 

 

A thing. Right. There was only ever one ‘thing’ when it came to Dean wanting to switch patrols.

 

“Sure. Date later today?” Missy asked. 

 

“Attempted date later today,” Dean corrected. Missy swallowed her sigh of discontent and reached for her phone, giving the screen a tap to wake it up and rapidly scrolling to the app that managed her shifts. She paused when she opened up tomorrow’s schedule.

 

“Oh, damn,” she swore, before clapping a hand over her mouth and giving Dean a scandalized look. 

 

“Hmm? What’s wrong?” Ever the gentleman, Dean pretended not to notice. 

 

“Can’t switch with you. Got a thing tomorrow,” Missy sighed as she saw the reminder she’d set on the calendar. Dean’s expression turned quizzical. 

 

“What kind of thing?” he asked. Missy usually wasn’t one to have ‘things’. As far as he knew the girl practically lived as a Ward.

 

“A mom thing. With her new boyfriend,” Missy grumbled, tossing her phone onto her bed and giving Dean an apologetic half-shrug while rubbing her arms. “Family outing. Can’t miss it. Sorry.”

 

“Ah, okay,” Dean hid his disappointment well, instead treating Missy to a jovial smile and a wave. “Well, sorry to bother you then, I’ll see you later.” 

 

“You could ask Sophia? She’s supposed to be my partner today for patrol, maybe she’d be willing to switch,” the young heroine said with as much enthusiasm as one would suggest bodily mutilation. 

 

“I did ask,” Dean said. “But she’s busy tomorrow too, big track meet.” He shrugged. “Well, thanks anyway, Missy. I’ll just text Vicky that I can’t, I guess. ”

 

“Not a problem, tell her I said hi,” she said glumly. She flopped back onto her bed and pulled a pillow over her face, wishing it would suffocate her. 

 

\--

 

Taylor cursed when she realized she wasn’t the first one back home. Why was Samantha even here? Didn’t she get off work at five, like a normal person?

 

“Taylor?” the woman’s look of surprise was expected, and not unwarranted. It was just after two in the afternoon; a whole hour before school let out. Taylor had excused herself from the Undersiders’ planning session early, as she had little to contribute. Or rather she couldn’t contribute, as her compromise with Lisa stated. 

 

“Hi,” Taylor greeted guiltily, shutting the door behind her. She considered bolting for the stairs and locking herself in her bedroom, but wasn’t sure whether or not Missy was home as well and didn’t exactly want to risk a more awkward interaction in her sanctum sanctorum. It was better to nip this one right in the bud.

 

“You’re home early.” Jesus, was this Samantha’s attempt at sounding nonchalant? A search warrant would have sounded less accusatory.

 

Taylor ducked her head. “Yeah,” she said, because what else was there to say? Hi, how was your day? Me? I skipped school to plan a bank robbery with my supervillain friends. Good talk. I’m gonna do the homework I didn’t take from class today now, bye. She began to inch towards the stairs. 

 

“Taylor.” Samantha’s voice stopped Taylor’s hand from reaching the bannister. Taylor offered no vocal response, so the older woman stepped out of the kitchen in order to make sure she was still there.

 

“Could I talk to you, please?” the Biron matriarch asked, drying her hands on a flowery towel. 

 

“About…?” Taylor asked, one foot still firmly planted on the staircase, calf tensed and coiled to prepare to launch her upwards into relative safety. After all, Samantha didn’t seem like the type to be content with talking to a closed door. 

 

Samantha sighed, depositing the towel on top of the shoe rack and rubbing her arms as she tried to decide on her words. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked as a means to lessen the tension between them.

 

“No, it’s fine,” Taylor replied, oblivious to the intent behind the offer. Her foot inched its way against the first step on the stairs.

 

“The house has been getting a few calls from your school.” If Samantha was taken aback by the refusal, she didn’t show it. As her question was asked, it took every fiber of Taylor’s being to throttle her instinctive response to flee the conversation and retreat upstairs. Instead she just dug her fingernails into the bannister and schooled her face into passivity. Taylor had a lot of practice doing that. 

 

“They said you’ve missed classes the last two days,” Samantha continued, oblivious to Taylor’s discomfort. A fly began to buzz maliciously around her head, and Samantha tried swatting at it while waiting for Taylor’s response. 

 

“...Yeah,” Taylor responded. Damn, of course the girlfriend would be nosing in on her truancy. Would she tell Dad?  _ Did _ she tell Dad? Was Dad  _ around _ ? Was she about to face the legendary Hebert wrath poke its head from a hiding spot behind a wall?

 

Samantha gave up on catching the bumbling fly as it buzzed its way into the kitchen. “Taylor,” she continued. “Is everything okay at school? Are  _ you _ okay?” 

 

...What? 

 

Taylor blinked owlishly, her body caught between wanting to tense up further and deflating like a popped balloon. Samantha’s words had caught her completely off guard. She expected to be reprimanded. To be threatened about her misconduct and missing class. A maelstrom of conflicting responses whirled around her mind, and the teenager found herself unable to focus on a single one. Eventually she settled on a whispered, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me.” 

 

Samantha frowned and crossed her arms. “Taylor, it’s my obligation to worry about you. And to be honest, even if I weren’t dating your father, I’d be worried about you.” 

 

Taylor continued to blink blankly at her. Her grip on the bannister loosened and her arm fell to her side. “Why?” 

 

It was Samantha’s turn to blink in confusion. “Why what?” 

 

“Why do you care?” The second the words left her mouth, Taylor realized it was the wrong thing to say. The girlfriend’s face twisted in an amalgamation of confusion and sadness and pity and Taylor wanted to tell her to stop. 

 

“Because you look like you need someone to,” Samantha answered.

 

Taylor leapt up the stairs and didn’t stop until her room was shut and solidly locked. Samantha did not follow her.

 

\--

 

It was an obnoxiously warm day for Brockton Bay in April. Springs in New England weren’t supposed to get up to seventy two with high humidity, even after the sun had set. Quite frankly, the fact that it happened was an abomination against mother nature, though one would be hard pressed to do much about it. Taylor, in a rare occurrence, was sweating in her baggy hoodie and jeans. 

 

“I will give you a hundred dollars when we get home if you could get them to stop, right now,” Missy muttered. A bowl of ice cream sat in front of her, untouched and quickly turning into a puddle of sugary milk before their very eyes. Taylor’s own concave cardboard construction was similarly undisturbed. 

 

Taylor sighed. “Just look away,” she said. “They’re not hurting you.” 

 

“They absolutely are, and you just don’t get it,” Missy snapped. 

 

To tell the truth, Taylor absolutely did get it. The scene before her was conflicting, to say the least. On one hand, she was practically ecstatic to see her dad so happy, she couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like that. The lines on his face were less pronounced, the exhaustion that she’d grown used to hanging around his body was dispelled, and even the lights around him seemed to shine just that touch brighter as he laughed and talked in a low voice with the woman sitting next to him.

 

On the other hand, the woman that Danny was cuddling and kissing and gently nipping at the ear of was someone that was decidedly  _ not _ her Mom, and that uncoiled a traitorous snake of jealous anger deep within her. Taylor didn’t know which one stung more or which one she felt more guilty about. The fact that her dad seemed so happy, or the fact that he was being happy on the bench that they always sat on when they went out to the Boardwalk with Mom.

 

She decided to try to take her mind off it by spooning some of the mess that used to be her ice cream into her mouth. The fudgy stew was an atrocity upon her tongue, coating it in sticky cocoa cludge that was more bitter than sweet. She set the spoon back down into the paper bowl and pursed her lips as Missy made a mock gagging noise at the pair of lovers.

 

“Stop that,” she commanded, while suppressing her own similar reaction to the display. She was thankful for the small number of crabs dotting the shoreline; she delved into their minds, letting the sensations from them fill her mind with the thrum of the waves crashing upon the shore and the pitter patter of feet upon the sand instead of…

 

Samantha said something, causing a raucous laugh to erupt from Danny while she also shared a few giggles that devolved into a deep kiss between them.

 

That. 

 

The kiss seemed to last an eternity, though in reality it was barely three seconds. Taylor tried to shovel another spoonful of goopy chocolate in her mouth after theirs parted. She found it very difficult to swallow, instead opting to spit it into a hastily grabbed paper towel. 

 

“Seriously. I’ll even up it to two hundred. I can pay you, I have a job,” Missy tried again. She began flinging bits of her half melted ice cream at the seagulls on the sand below them. The feathered menaces weren’t interested in her offering, however, instead opting to sift through the sand for bits of discarded french fries or other more solid sustenance. 

 

“I said stop,” Taylor insisted again while debating about offering the ante up to a thousand. She had the funds for it, after all, and nowhere to spend her ill-gotten gains. Maybe this ridiculous idea was a good investment as any.

 

“It’s just ice cream, and are you really trying to defend seagulls? Have you ever met one?” Missy asked, missing the intent of the remark entirely, instead trying to catapult a dab of gluey vanilla by bending her spoon back and letting the physics of elasticity do its work. The small patch of light beige sailed far down the beach, but did not find its intended mark. For a brief second, Taylor contemplated joining her. The action would certainly draw her focus away from her Dad and Samantha.

 

Instead she tried to be the more mature one between them. “I meant about our parents,” she said, subtly gesturing at their parents by pointing an ice cream covered spoon in their direction. Samantha caught the gesture out of the corner of her eye and turned to give the two girls a cheery wave. Missy huffed in annoyance and pointedly looked away. Her mother’s hand dropped in disappointment.

 

“It just looks so...wrong,” Missy murmured. Taylor stopped herself from nodding in agreement at the last second.

 

“It’s not wrong,” she said. “Just...different.” 

 

Missy flung another smidge of ice cream towards a seagull. It landed on the avian’s wing, causing it to squawk in alarm and take off in panicked flight. Satisfied with the pest’s banishment, Missy pushed her bowl away, folded her arms on the table, and dropped her head onto the fleshy cushion.

 

“I don’t think I like different,” she said.

 

“I don’t think many people do,” Taylor replied. 

 

Missy didn’t answer, instead peeking out from behind her arms and a few loose strands of blonde hair to stare at the grown-up bench. Much to her dismay, she caught their eye. They leaned closer to each other to share a few whispers, then stood and made their way towards the rickety wooden table that she and Missy had claimed at the beginning of this particular family outing.

 

“You girls doing okay?” Danny asked as he settled down with Samantha. Taylor bit her lip while Missy looked down at her melted ice cream uncomfortably. 

 

_ Be strong _ , Taylor thought.  _ Be strong for Dad. Don’t say anything bad. He deserves this.  _ She lifted her head and attempted to brandish a similar smile to the one he saw on Danny’s face earlier. The end result was that she looked like she just stepped into a pail of broken glass. “We’re fine,” she answered. 

 

“Your ice cream’s all melted,” Samantha observed through a worried look and pursed lips. “Do you two want to get new bowls?”

 

“It’s fine, we weren’t hungry.” Of all the people at the table, Taylor was the most surprised by Missy’s response. She’d expected something snarky and rude to come out of the young girl’s mouth. The grown-ups also found themselves at a lack for words, and so the four of them were reduced to fidgeting and awkwardly smiling at each other. It sort of worked out for the better; Danny and Samantha found it uncomfortable to engage in PDA next to their daughters, and Missy and Taylor prayed with every fervent breath that they wouldn’t start in front of them. 

 

“Well, then,” Danny was the first to try to break the ice. It did as well as a dull butterknife scraping against an Antarctic ice shelf. “Should we get going? It’s getting late and the two of you have school tomorrow.” 

 

There was a visible sigh of relief shared between Taylor and Missy. “Yeah, sure, let’s go,” both girls said at the same time. 


	6. Chapter 6

Samantha was not used to waking up to the sunrise. 

 

Her old house was set up perfectly to avoid this fact, with the window of the master bedroom facing directly due north, thus avoiding the unwelcome intrusion of the rising sun. As it stood, the sunrise would never directly hit her window at her old house, but rather she’d be woken up by her alarm at six thirty; a time she’d planned her career and life around for several years. 

 

But here, in Danny’s house, it was the opposite. 

 

A splash of photons spearing through the window and into her face, rousing her with a frustrated grunt and a tired arm groping outwards to draw a damnable set of curtains that lie just out of her reach. Defeated by the placement of her boyfriend’s bed and bedroom window, Samantha pushed herself up to sitting and turned to look at the analog alarm clock on the dresser. Typically, she’d check her phone for the time, but after Danny’s repeated pleadings, she’d learned to keep the device out of sight when he was around, which included the bedroom. It was...understandable, if a little grating. 

 

The spindly black hands set into the grey plastic alarm clock told her it was six-oh-five in the morning. Distantly, she heard the sounds and smells of breakfast being prepared downstairs.

 

Samantha stood, rubbing away vestigial sleep in her eyes and plodded towards the bathroom down the hall. The shower was heavenly, and she stepped back out half an hour later feeling reinvigorated from the morning haze. 

 

No sooner had she shut the bedroom door behind her did she hear the bathroom opening and closing again. Taylor finally worked out Samantha’s schedule half a week into the Birons’ stay, and had adjusted her own morning routine accordingly to ensure they saw each other in the morning as little as possible.

 

Samantha frowned. She still needed to talk to Danny about Taylor. She’d meant to, yesterday, but between work and their family outing, it’d slipped her mind.

 

_ I’ll do it during breakfast _ she thought to herself as she began to dress for work. 

 

If asked, Samantha would like to call herself a people person. She was approachable, personable, sociable, able to carry small-talk no matter how meandering the conversation, fit to bursting with a hundred and one anecdotes, collected through her life and ready to be relayed to anyone with a willing ear. She had to be, after all, as a saleswoman. The ability to engage in conversation was worth its weight in gold in her line of work, and also when bringing up potentially sensitive topics to a significant other. 

 

“We need to talk,” Samantha said as she bit into a piece of oven-roasted bacon. Danny sat down across from her and raised an eyebrow. Both girls had gone to school by themselves. Taylor claimed she needed to leave early to get a school project done, and Missy got an emergency call from the PRT first thing in the morning. Thankfully, Danny bought the story about a friend from school giving her a ride. 

 

“That’s ominous,” he said, tucking into a small bowl of fruit. Samantha hurriedly waved a hand.

 

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “Not about us. It’s about Taylor.” 

 

Danny put down his fork and reached for his coffee. “For some reason, that sounds even more ominous,” he said, taking a sip. “Everything okay between you two?” 

 

Samantha raised her hands. “Fine, absolutely fine,” she said. “I just wanted to talk to you about her.” 

 

“About?” Danny asked.

 

“Did you know she’s been missing classes?” Samantha asked.

 

Concern etched itself onto Danny's face. “No, I didn’t,” he said, putting down his breakfast. That was alarming. Taylor was never one to skip school. 

 

“She came home early the other day,” Samantha explained. “Right after the school called the house phone. They said they tried to reach you specifically, but…” 

 

 “But I wasn’t at home, and they had no other phone to contact me with,” Danny finished for her. All Samantha could do was shrug. Danny sighed and rubbed his forehead with a hand, both coffee and food forgotten.

 

“I should talk to her. Ask her why,” he said after a few moments of silence.

 

“ _ We _ should talk to her,” Samantha emphasized, reaching forward and laying a hand over Danny’s. 

 

“No, this is between me and Taylor, I shouldn’t just drag—” 

 

“Finish that sentence, Daniel Hebert, and I will slap you,” Samantha said, waggling a finger warningly. “This is something the both of us should talk to her about. If I needed to talk to Missy about something as important as skipping school I would be roping you into it too.” 

 

Danny sighed, but nodded in affirmation. “Tonight,” he decided. “We’ll talk to her tonight.”

\--

All in all, Taylor thought her current infiltration of the Undersiders was going swimmingly. Lisa probably didn’t suspect much, Brian was glad for another member that seemed semi-functional, and neither Alec nor Rachel seemed to spare her much attention. 

 

There was a slight problem, however. 

 

“Tattletale, I thought you said we were robbing a  _ bank _ ,” Taylor said, staring through the lenses of her mask at a red and grey steel box that was decidedly  _ not _ a bank. There was some relation, to be sure. It was square, like a bank, and it had the words ‘Brockton Bay Central Bank’ stamped on the side in big block lettering. That was about where the similarities ended. The biggest difference between what Taylor was seeing and a bank was the four tires affixed underneath the box and the two policemen with assault rifles guarding it. 

 

“Change of plans, Bay Central is way too big for what we need to do today. And this is close enough to a bank. It’s square and it’s got money inside,” Tattletale said, scanning the street. The Undersiders were positioned in the alleyway, just wide enough for Bitch’s dogs to stand one after the other and be grown to the size of a motorcycle. 

 

Taylor turned to give Tattletale a look, but realized it was pointless between her mask and the Thinker’s divided attention. She instead focused her nervous energy on the giant cloud of bugs that were coiling through every abandoned alley on the block. They’d left the loft early specifically so she could build up her swarm, after being told only given the scantest of details of today’s plan, and now Taylor was feeling hundreds of thousands of insects slither and slide across old brick and pavement, ready to pounce on the armored van. 

 

She began to pick out some of the more vicious stingers and biters and bunched them together near the back: wasps, black widows, horseflies, yellow jackets, centipedes. The works. They began to coalesce into a formidable ball of biological terror that slowly separated themselves from the rest of her swarm. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be needed here; Taylor intended for them to be the ace up her sleeve in case any Protectorate heroes showed up. Tattletale had said chances were slim to none that the white hats would get here before they left, but it was always better to be prepared. 

 

“Alright, we’re clear, ladies and gentlemen, places please,” Tattletale announced, apparently satisfied with her inspection of the street. The blonde Thinker swung herself over one of the slowly growing dogs and held tight to its fur. Taylor pulled herself up behind her. 

 

Tattletale grinned. “And we are about to hit lights in three…” 

 

Ants, millipedes, beetles, mosquitoes, and a hundred other genera of critters marshalled themselves into formation at Taylor’s command. Her army of mandibles and carapace quieted, standing silent and unmoving, awaiting her signal. 

 

“Camera, two…”

 

Regent and Grue swung themselves over the second dog, with Bitch already straddling her own in the very back. Wisps of black smoke and streams of bugs unfurled themselves against the alley, itching to cover the street.

 

“And one. Action!”

 

A wave of of creepy crawlies marched onto the street underneath the wave of smokey darkness, millions of legs scurried forward in a pitter patter as thousands of her minions began to seek armor and fabric to latch onto and bite. The dog that Taylor was riding on lurched forward, almost throwing her off its back. Only quick reflexes and strong grip strength prevented such a fate. She felt its flesh and fur blossom out as it left the cover of the alley as well as a dull thump as it connected with the side of the armored van. 

 

Said van tumbled across the street and smashed into a row of parked cars on the far side, causing the wail of alarms to join the panic of civilians. The armed officers reacted quickly, raising their guns towards the team of villains, but found their arms uncooperative. A jerk from Regent’s hand caused the pair of them to drop their weapons and Taylor took her cue to jump down from her ride and circle towards the back of the van, drawing a baton and knife that the boss had supplied her with in case there were extra guards inside. Tattletale and Regent joined her, each with a duffel bag on their shoulders. 

 

“Give me an update, Tattletale,” Grue took charge immediately, letting his darkness swamp the entire street while Taylor directed her bugs to hover menacingly in a perimeter just outside of the smoke. An eerie quiet settled over their patch of open ground.

 

“We’ve got five minutes, PRT got alerted the second we hit and a Protectorate member is on their way, most likely Armsmaster or Velocity. I guess they weren’t expecting someone to hit the vans today,” Tattletale said, unslinging her duffel bag. The van’s door hadn’t been closed when the Undersiders launched their attack, letting Taylor peer through the open doors at the green coated innards of the van. Her two teammates slid inside and quickly began harvesting their ill gotten gains.

 

“Good. Bug, with me,” Grue’s voice sounded ethereal behind his helmet and power. He directed Taylor to the opposite end of the upended vehicle, leaving the other three Undersiders to commit the actual robbery while the two of them stood guard. Taylor let her bugs spread out to her maximum range as she realized the two police officers were neutralized by Regent’s taser. She set her scouts on guard duty; letting their bodies feel for any disturbances in the ground that would tell of approaching heroes or police cars. Thankfully, most of the bystanders had already fled in terror, excepting a few who were trying to record the robbery on their cell phones, and a few clumps of wasps buzzing menacingly towards them were enough to send even the bravest on their way. 

 

_ Better scared than attacked by Bitch’s dogs _ Taylor thought as she chased them away.

 

No law enforcement came, and soon their duffels were full almost to the point of bursting. Taylor marvelled at how easily all of it happened. Before their five minutes were up, the Undersiders hitched the bags onto the sides of Bitch’s dogs and climbed back on top. 

 

“Okay, that was clean. Velocity’s going to be here in fifteen seconds, let’s skedaddle get ready for round two,” Tattletale said as Bitch whistled for the dogs to leap down the street. 

 

Taylor nodded. Right. Round two. It turned out that the boss’s imperative had changed once she became a no-show for Thursday; now instead of doing one job, the boss wanted three, and they wanted them flashy. Big, loud, and attention grabbing, each and every single one, with a bonus payout to every one of them for every hero they got to show up but not engage. Tattletale hadn’t given her the entire plan, but that was about the gist of it. It wasn’t as though she had any choice but to commit.

 

_ No, you had a choice. You could have walked away and let Armsmaster arrest all of them right here. You just decided to go and help the villains anyway _ a traitorous part of her brain said. Taylor shook her head. No. This was the right choice. She was going to find the Undersiders’ secret backer, and then tell Armsmaster so that they could clear them out, top to bottom. The bug controller shoved down any other niggling whispers of doubt and dug her masked face deep against the thick fur of the monstrous dog she was riding. 

 

It was going to be a long day.

\--

It had been a long damn day, Missy reflected, and it wasn’t even noon yet. The PRT headquarters were in an uproar, with a priority alert having gone out first thing in the morning. Even the Wards had been called in to assist on the backend as the Protectorate fielded the bigger problems in the Bay. 

 

Initially, the priority alert was an abduction; apparently the mayor’s niece went missing sometime in the early afternoon yesterday, a bit of news that proved unactionable at the time as the Protectorate were out of town and the Wards were scattered. 

 

As the older heroes settled in with the Director to discuss how to tackle this problem, however, a hundred more seemed to arise. 

 

First was the report of the ABB potentially mobilizing to free Lung, with whispers of bomb threats and marching in the streets, and so Assault and Battery were sent to investigate. 

 

Second was another report which put Cricket, Uber, Leet, Circus, and Trainwreck engaging in a four way brawl over an unknown objective close to downtown, which redirected Miss Militia, Triumph, and the PRT’s finest to respond. 

 

And at the bottom of the pile was the Undersiders performing a string of robberies seemingly across the entire span of the city, and managing to leave the scene of the crime each time just before anyone could respond. An ability they were attributing to their team’s Thinker coupled with Hellhound's dogs. 

 

Missy sighed and thumbed the microphone on console as two pulsing dots reached their destination. “Console to Aegis and Browbeat. Come in, Aegis and Browbeat.” 

 

“This is Aegis and Browbeat,” Carlos’s voice came through the speakers. “Got here too late. A few paintings missing, a few civilians with minor injuries, mostly from tripping over themselves, but no sign of the Undersiders. They’re gone, console.”

 

“Acknowledged, return to base,” Missy said listlessly and shut off her mic before pulling at her hair in frustration. A can of soda deposited itself onto the desk, and she turned to face Dean. “Hey,” she greeted. 

 

“Hey,” Dean returned, pulling up a chair next to the console. “Your shift’s done in five minutes, by the way.

 

“Gotchu,” Missy said, taking a sip of the offered beverage. She gagged. “Ugh, root beer?” 

 

“Not a fan?” Dean asked. 

 

“Um...not really. But thank you anyway,” Missy answered, setting the can far away from her. The pair of dots indicating Aegis and Browbeat began to make their way back to the Ward’s base. She sighed. “This sucks.” 

 

“It is what it is,” Dean said sagely. “At least there haven’t been any serious injuries today.” 

 

“Yet,” Missy responded out of habit, and mentally slapped herself for tempting fate like that. 

 

“Yet,” Dean agreed. 

 

The doors slid open, admitting both Kid Win and Clockblocker in their costumes. Chris tore off his mask and threw it on the table. “Fuck bees,” he announced.

 

“Language,” Missy and Dean intoned. 

 

“Nuh uh, nope. None of you are pulling that on me, not today,” he said, rubbing at his shoulder. “Fuck bees, and that is final.” 

 

“The Undersiders have a new member,” Dennis explained, beginning to strip out of his costume. A clock face and off-white pads joined the growing pile of Tinkertech. “We think they’re a Master. Bugs. Vicious with them too.” 

 

“You saw them?” Missy asked, straightening in her chair and pulling up the Undersiders’ file on the console. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she waited for more information. 

 

“No, they were leaving, we saw a trail of Grue’s smoke going down the street. We moved in to investigate, but was subsequently beset upon by a cloud of black and yellow menace,” Chris finished dramatically. He tore off the rest of his armor and began to prod gingerly at a few ugly red welts on his face. Dennis headed towards their communal shelf space to search for a first-aid kit. 

 

“You’re not allergic to bees, right, Chris?” he asked.

 

“If I was I’d be dying on the street of anaphylactic shock instead of sitting here, Dennis,” Chris snapped. 

 

“Point.” 

 

Missy entered in the new information and updated the PRT’s file. Not too much in general on the team of villains, sadly. They were slippery, and tended to favor hit and runs instead of straight up robberies. Maybe they were capitalizing on today’s tumult to be a little bolder, maybe it was a sign of even bigger threats to come. 

 

A stroke of the enter key confirmed her edits. The young Shaker stood, retrieved her unwelcome gift of root beer, and let Dean take over the console. 

 

“You okay?” she asked as she settled next to Chris, who was gently smearing antibacterial cream over his wounds. He hissed in pain as he accidentally applied too much pressure to one of the stings. 

 

“I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s more annoying than anything else,” he grumbled. 

 

“Not what you said when they first attacked you,” Dennis said, sitting down across from him and swapping Missy’s can of root beer with his can of coke. “I remember it being more ‘Aaahh, oh god, get them off me, I’m going to die!’” 

 

“I’m going to design an entirely airtight suit of armor,” Chris said, ignoring him. “Not a damn millimeter of exposed skin. And I’ll cover it in bug spray. Tinkertech bug spray. I’ll ask Armsmaster to help invent it. I’m never going to look at bees the same way again.” 

 

“Well then, here’s to you, your bug spray, and to us getting chewed out later for letting the Undersiders get away,” Dennis said, sliding a third can of coke towards Chris and raising his can in a mock toast. Missy joined him with the same sarcastic energy.

\--

“Here’s to crime, villainy, and a job well done!” Lisa cheered, raising a can of soda in a toast. She was met with three others. Bitch didn’t come back to the loft with them, electing to go tend to her dogs. Taylor found herself joining the toast with similar cheer, though for different reasons. 

 

Three jobs executed with minimal injuries, and none of them were directly caused by her. Well, with the exception of Kid Win, but she didn’t have the wasps inject any venom with their stings, and only stung him with a handful to get the Ward to back off. She doubted she dealt any lasting damage. And maybe she’d robbed a few places, but that was just money, and that could always be returned.

 

“And here’s to the easiest two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of our lives,” Lisa finished, and collapsed back down onto the couch. 

 

Taylor found herself still unbelieving of today’s haul. With the bonus from the boss for luring out two teams of Wards and a member of the Protectorate, the total payout today for each member of the Undersiders was fifty grand. A sum she found herself having difficulty to envision, as her own bank account never exceeded a few hundred at its peak. And a sum she would definitely have to turn over to the authorities when the time came.

 

For now though, Taylor found herself relaxing onto the Undersiders’ couch while Alec and Lisa bickered about who was going to be using the TV. 

 

“You sticking around for the night?” Brian asked, and Taylor choked on her sip of soda. 

 

“Um. What?” Taylor fumbled, reading far too much into the statement.

 

Brian shrugged. “Was thinking of going out to Lord Street with everyone. Get some food. You know, as a team.” 

 

“Oh. Right, right,” Taylor said, nodding furiously in a mixture of relief and embarrassment. “Food. Team food. Food with the team. Yeah.” 

 

“Yeah. Good way to de-stress. So are you coming?” 

 

“Sure. Sounds like fun. Let me call my dad to tell him I won’t be home,” Taylor said as an excuse to get off the couch and prevent herself from lapsing any more into caveman talk. She hurried to the phone in the Undersider’s kitchen.

 

“Hebert residence,” Danny’s voice greeted her after she dialed in her home phone.

 

“Hey, dad,” Taylor began. 

 

“Taylor?” Danny sounded surprised. “Where are you right now?” 

 

“I’m with friends. Listen, Dad, I won’t be home for dinner tonight, okay? We’re going out to Lord Street to get food. And I might stay the night.”

 

There was a pause. As it grew, Taylor began to get a little worried. “Dad?” she asked. 

 

“Taylor,” Danny spoke to let her know he was still on the line. “...Could you...could you come home, actually?” 

 

Now it was Taylor’s turn to pause. A second passed. Then two. Then ten. She didn’t know how to respond 

 

“Taylor?” Hearing her name shook her out of her reverie. 

 

“Um...why?” she asked the handset. A finger began twirling itself into the wire.

 

“There’s...it’s...I need to talk to you about something. About school. Please, Taylor, just come home tonight, okay?” 

 

The words chilled Taylor’s blood as a hundred and one reasons of what Danny wanted to talk to her about flashed through her brain. Possibilities ranged from just a talk about missing classes to calling her out on being a cape. She considered each and every option carefully, arriving at one that was the least distasteful.

 

“...Okay, I’m on my way,” she said, and hung up.


	7. Chapter 7

The journey home was nerve-wracking. 

 

With each passing minute, Taylor felt tension knotting up her body, winding her muscles and tearing at her thoughts, resulting in a perpetual half-panic that left her short of breath and nauseous. It was slow going; she’d elected to walk instead of taking public transportation in an attempt to use the extra time to solve her predicament, a decision she sorely regretted fifteen minutes into her journey. All that extra time simply served to put her more on edge. 

 

It also didn’t help her nerves at all to reach her front porch the same time Missy did. 

 

The pair of them stared at each other instead of going into the house, with Taylor noting Missy’s ragged look and Missy noting Taylor’s tense stance. Neither brought up either detail.

 

“...Long day?” In a rare display, it was Taylor who broke the silence first in an attempt to stave off her imminent conversation with Danny.

 

“...One hell of one, yeah,” Missy answered. “You?” 

 

Taylor rubbed her shoulder. “Kind of.” 

 

The two of them stewed awkwardly in the silence. Missy was the first to break eye contact and try to find something else in the near-empty street to stare at. 

 

“Hey, um—” This time it was Missy who broke the silence. “You weren’t caught up in any of the uh...stuff downtown today, right?” 

 

“What stuff?” Taylor asked. 

 

Missy’s head snapped back in confusion. “You know, the robberies? It’s been all over the news,” she said.

 

“O-oh,” Taylor said. She shook her head. “No, I’ve been, uh...at the library for most of the day.” 

 

She paused.

 

“Wait, did  _ you _ get caught in the middle of that stuff?” she asked, feeling a surprising wave of guilt surge forward to meet her already towering backlog of apprehension. Missy shook her head.

 

“No, no, not me. A friend of mine,” she clarified. “Nothing too bad, though, just a few scrapes and scratches.” 

 

Taylor wilted further as the guilt subsumed the apprehension and threatened to bowl her over with its sheer presence. “That’s...that’s good then,” she said. “That they didn’t get hurt, I mean, not about the robberies.” 

 

Missy shrugged. “It is what it is. Want to head in? I’m beat. And starving.” 

 

_ No, not at all, _ was what Taylor wanted to say. “Okay,” was the word that left her lips. 

 

She led the way, and the pair of them ascended the rickety stairs of the Hebert’s front porch. The door creaked open, its whinging hinges eliciting an involuntary shudder from Taylor, and not because of the noise. Missy slipped between her, deposited her backpack onto the couch, and hurried to the bathroom.

 

“Dad?” Taylor called out to the suddenly foreboding abode. 

 

“In the kitchen, Taylor,” Danny called back. 

 

The Hebert’s kitchen had become a small warzone. 

 

Pots, pans, bowls, and spoons lay scattered across countertop and the dining table alike. A cornucopia of vegetables and spices was the centerpiece of it all, with items Taylor thought long forgotten and unused radiating outward from its central piece like a haphazard porcelain and steel flower. She stepped over the threshold between the living room and the kitchen at the same time she mentally stepped through the threshold from apprehension to befuddlement. 

 

“Dad?” she asked again. 

 

Danny perked up at her voice, and handed the bowl of dough he’d been kneading off to Samantha, who gave Taylor a quiet nod of greeting. He began to wipe his hands with a towel. 

 

“Hey, kiddo,” he greeted. 

 

“What’re you doing?” Taylor asked. 

 

She watched her dad pull out another bowl from the bizarre arrangement on the dining table and begin depositing...were those onions? He began to deposit a large bag of onions into the receptacle. 

 

“Well, I was waiting for you to come home, so I thought I’d get started on dinner. Gonna need a little bit more time tonight than usual,” he explained, placing the bowl of onions beneath the faucet and turning it on. Water began to splash onto the collection of brown, yellow, and purple vegetables.

 

The ingredients, sounds, and smells finally connected some distant memory in Taylor’s brain. “You’re making French onion soup,” she realized. Then she spotted a simmering pot of bubbling brown liquid on the stove, as well as a distinct sprig of leafy herb in its glass jar. 

 

“Mom’s French onion soup,” she appended.

 

“Yup, it’s been a while, thought I’d dust the old recipe off, make a nicer night out of it,” her father acknowledged. A final, insistent scrub polished the last onion in his bowl. The faucet shut off, and he moved them towards his cutting board, leaving his daughter hovering awkwardly in the doorway. 

 

“Do...do you need any help?” Taylor finally worked up the courage to ask as she watched her dad make thin half rings out of the onions. Danny’s knife stopped moving. 

 

“Yeah...yeah, I do,” he said, turning and gesturing to the stove. “Could you come help look after the stock, please?” 

 

Taylor plodded towards the stove. 

 

The roiling pot of broth looked exactly like the hundreds she’d seen before it, muted yellow-brown and shining with a thin sheen of fats and oils. She picked up the long wooden spoon and began to stir the contents, making sure to keep it evenly heated. She let her eyes roam around the rest of the kitchen. Samantha, busy kneading a ball of dough, gave her a gentle smile from the opposite end of the kitchen. Taylor decided to turn her attention back to the broth. 

 

Once Taylor settled back in to her own kitchen, the work went by in a blur. Distant memories of a lifetime and a half ago prompted her body to the necessary actions, leaving her mind to wander through the stilted, yet warm conversation between her and her dad. It was basic, surface-level talk; greetings, questions about her day that she deflected, and questions about his that were answered by small tales and anecdotes, all of it held over the low hum of food preparation, but it was welcome all the same. At some point Missy poked into the kitchen to filch a snack. She was on the retreat when her mom called her name.

 

“Get started on your homework, don’t just look at your phone all night, Missy,” Samantha said before she got to the stairs.

 

“Speaking of homework, how was school today, Taylor?” Danny began. Taylor cringed, the spoon in her hand clattering to the ground as her shoulders hunched and every muscle of her body tensed. Right. Dad had wanted to talk to her. Now she knew what he wanted to talk about.

 

Danny sighed. “That was bad.”

 

“Horrific,” Samantha piped up. She’d moved on to cleaning the dining table, carefully stacking and putting away the large number of bowls and plates that had dominated it before. “Terrible. Zero in every category.” 

 

Taylor ignored the both of them in favor of retrieving her spoon and retreating to tend to her hearth. Her dad began to clean his knife under the sink. 

 

“I’m not mad at you, Taylor,” he said. 

 

“I didn’t say you were,” Taylor replied.

 

“But I do want to talk about you missing school lately.”

 

Taylor nodded. “Okay.”

 

“And about a couple of other things.”

 

“Okay.” 

 

“Taylor. Please look at me.” 

 

She didn’t want to. Every fiber of her being screamed at her not to. Taylor was sure that if there was an angel and a devil on either of her shoulders, they would both be in agreement over how bad of an idea it was right now to turn her head. 

 

She turned to face her father. 

 

He looked healthier than she remembered him being, and wasn’t that something weird to realize about someone she lived with. The Danny Hebert in her mind’s eye used to be grey, pallid. A person suffused to his fingertips with exhaustion and drained of color after her mom’s passing. The man washing his knife wasn’t that. 

 

The man washing his knife looked hearty and hale, albeit with a crease of worry striking through his face as he absentmindedly rinsed his knife under the faucet while looking at her. 

 

“I know, Taylor. I know about the school thing, but I wasn’t sure where to start,” Danny said, turning off the faucet and wiping down the blade with a towel. He slotted it into the wooden holder and stepped towards the stove, gently taking the wooden spoon out of his daughter’s hand to take charge of the bubbling pot. “But I suppose I should begin with an apology.” 

 

“Apology?” Taylor asked.

 

“Yes, an apology,” Danny answered. The stirring slowed as he turned off the gas. A puff of steam billowed from the pot when the flame vanished and he began to ladle out portions of its contents into a few soup bowls. “I am sorry.” 

 

This was just becoming confusing. “For what?”

 

“For a lot of things,” Danny said, handing her a bowl of soup and gesturing for her to put it on the table. Samantha had finished cleaning and set it for four when Taylor wasn’t looking. 

 

“But mostly for being...absent, recently.” 

 

Taylor avoided her dad’s eyes as she accepted the second bowl of soup. “No you haven’t, we’ve talked,” she said. 

 

“We’ve talked like two co-workers who barely see each other. Not like a family,” Danny replied. “And a lot of that is on me, Taylor. I am sorry for it. It takes a lot for a father to not realize his daughter isn’t going to school. Even more for someone else to tell him about it.” 

 

Taylor’s hand twitched as she set down the second bowl of soup. “I was just—I was doing a thing. Things. At the library.” 

 

“Do those things involve splashing around in a pool of fruit juice and soda?” The next question in Danny’s inquisitive assault came in the form of a verbal hand grenade. Taylor shot Samantha a look, who had the decency to at least look away guiltily. So she had told him.

 

“It was just a prank. Nothing serious,” she turned back to answer her dad.

 

Danny brought the last bowl of soup over to the table himself and began to lay out slices of freshly baked bread onto a large plate.

 

“The last time you said something was just a prank, Taylor, I was visiting you in the hospital,” he said quietly. Taylor fell into a chair at the dinner table, silent. Danny finished laying out the meal and Samantha left the kitchen to call Missy.

 

“It hasn’t stopped, has it? Since the hospital,” he asked.

 

“It’s fine, dad,” Taylor said. “Look, I’ll go back tomorrow. Make up the work I’ve missed, serve the detentions. It’s fine. I’m okay.” 

 

“That isn’t the problem here, Taylor. I just want you to tell me what’s wrong,” Danny said, laying a hand on Taylor’s shoulder.

 

“Nothing’s wrong, Dad, it’s just a few things I need to work out. On my own,” Taylor replied. 

 

“You can’t do everything on your own, Taylor.” Taylor didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t. Danny’s face twisted in concern as he tried to work out what best to say next to wheedle out the ills plaguing his daughter, but was interrupted by the appearance of Samantha and Missy at the base of the stairs.

 

He sighed. “We’ll continue this later, okay? Let’s just eat, for now?” Taylor nodded silently in agreement. 

 

The Birons stepped cautiously between them to sit at the table; even Missy recognized the hovering tension in the air. However, the unease lifted slowly as the four of them began their meal, and soon idle chit chat drifted through the kitchen. Danny made good on his promise not to bring up Taylor’s truancy, and the two of them returned to their usual mealtime talk. Which was to say, close to silence. 

 

Warm soup and fluffy bread wore away at the tension gripping Taylor, and eventually she found herself smiling along with her dad and his girlfriend as they regaled her and Missy with stories from their day.

 

In fact, dinner put her so at ease, she was almost ready for that conversation with her dad when an explosion rocked the street and the kitchen plunged into darkness.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Vista reacted instantly.

 

Her power reached out like a vast net, catching the now familiar house in its trawl, and with a shove, she forced it to move like wet clay.

 

Every orifice of the abode collapsed in on itself. Window frames smushed themselves to slivers, doorways twisted into imitation silly string, the large, open exit to the living room minimized to the size of a mousehole. She wrenched with her power again, and the kitchen slowly smoothed itself into a perfect shell of drywall. Vista knew full well that she’d just outed herself to the Heberts, but that wasn’t the important thing right now. 

 

“Is everyone okay?” she asked, turning around and peering through the dim kitchen to check on her mom.

 

“What just…” Danny said, a sentiment that was matched by Taylor’s equally confused, “What the hell?”

 

“Missy, are you okay? What just happened?” she heard her mom say. 

 

“What do you mean what just happened, I—” Vista began, but tapered off when she realized what her mom was doing.

 

Missy shook her head, schooling her features into confoundment.

 

“I dunno?” she lied. “I feel okay.”

 

“What just happened to the house?” Taylor asked, causing Missy to cringe. She had really hoped they wouldn’t notice.

 

“I have no idea,” she lied, faking surprise at her warped surroundings now that the immediate danger had passed. Danny trekked through the darkness, laying a hand on the nearby wall to slowly feel his way to the unwarped kitchen phone.

 

“Nothing. Not so much as static,” he announced when he reached it.

 

“No, seriously, what just happened to the house?” Taylor demanded again. 

 

“I...I don’t know,” Danny admitted. “Maybe it was something to do with the power outage?”

 

“What? No, how is that even possible?” Taylor said. “What even was that? An explosion? Explosions don’t just vanish the doorway and windows!”

 

She fumbled her way through the dark to where the doorway of the living room was supposed to be, running her hands along the wall much like Danny had in his quest to find the phone. “It’s just...wall,” she said.

 

“Actually, it’s plaster,” Missy supplied.

 

“That’s not the point,” Taylor replied sharply, turning and jabbing her index finger towards Missy. 

 

“What is the point, then?” Missy snapped back.

 

“The point is that we're stuck in here now!”

 

“We’re safe in here.”

 

“We’re  _ trapped _ in here.”

 

_ No, we’re not, I can undo this as easily as snapping my fingers,  _ was what Missy wanted to say, neglecting to mention the fact that she couldn’t snap her fingers. She shrugged instead. “Whatever’s going on out there is out there, and we’re in here. It’s perfectly safe,” she said.

 

“I don’t know.” Missy began to rue the day her mother ever met the man Daniel Hebert. Did all civilians think about running outside during a crisis? “I think Taylor’s right. Something weird just happened to the house, and with that explosion, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. We should try to get outside, at least, and call the police.”

 

“Hard to do that when the door’s missing,” Taylor said, trying to wriggle her fingers through the mousehole that used to be the entrance to her living room. Missy felt her hold on the space slowly slipping away. She tried to grasp at it harder than before, to prevent it from opening, but to little avail. 

 

“Wait, I think the door’s coming back, dad, the hole’s getting wider,” Taylor called to Danny, who headed over the investigate. Missy felt a pair of arms wrap around her shoulders. 

 

“I think you should let go now, Missy,” her mom whispered in her ear. 

 

“Whatever caused that power outage could still be outside,” she whispered back. 

 

“That’s fine.”

 

“You could get hurt.”

 

“Yes, I know, but I also think Danny and Taylor are going to get themselves hurt trying to find a way out of the house at this rate,” Samantha said, turning Missy around and squatting down to face her daughter. “We’ll be fine, okay? We can deal with whatever’s happened together.”

 

Missy dropped her head, all fight leaving her frame at her mother’s request, and relinquished her hold on the Hebert’s house. 

 

Taylor and Danny leapt back from their attempts at embiggening the previously mousehole sized exit to the kitchen as it snapped back to its full length. The windows and backdoor similarly returned to their original positions as previous, normal reality asserted itself over the space. The father and daughter visibly relaxed, both breathing large sighs of relief. 

 

_ You’re welcome,  _ Missy thought sarcastically.  _ Now we’re going to be attacked by whatever is outside, you idiots. _

 

“Oh, wow, look at that, it looks like it’s back to normal.” Missy tried to make her words sound as genuine as she could. She did not succeed.

 

“Can you stop that for just five minutes,” Taylor said, annoyance evident in her voice. She positioned herself on the couch, peering through the blinds and out the window to the street.

 

“Stop what?” Missy asked crossly.

 

“That. Stop that.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking ab—”

 

“Girls, please,” Danny interrupted them before joining Taylor’s vigil at the couch. “Taylor, do you see anything?” 

 

“Looks fine, just dark. I think the whole street lost power. Nothing outside that I can see,” Taylor murmured. 

 

“Well, you know what they say, no news is good news,” Danny said, moving away from the window to check on the front door. After making sure the lock was secured he turned to face the kitchen. “Sam, are you okay?” he asked.

 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Samantha said, letting go of Missy and grabbing Danny’s hands in her own. “Come on, we should probably get some flashlights or something. I can barely see a thing.”

 

As the adults moved towards the basement though, everyone in the house was startled by a sudden intrusion of sound. For many long seconds, the four people in the house just stared at each other while the T-Mobile jingle blared distantly from upstairs. 

 

“Is that…?” Danny was the first to break the silence.

 

“It’s not mine. You know I keep it in the car,” Samantha said.

 

“Not mine either, they’re always on silent,” Missy continued.

 

All three heads turned to Taylor, who began to fidget under the attention.

 

“Taylor?” Danny asked.

 

“I can explain,” she said slowly. “But can I go answer it first?”

 

Her dad’s face flickered with a hundred and one different expressions cycling from confusion to anger and finally to what could only be described as abject defeat.

 

“Yes, go answer it,” he sighed. “But then we are talking. Not just about the phone, about everything else, too, okay?” 

 

Taylor nodded, scampering up the stairs. Samantha laid a hand across Danny’s back and gently coaxed him into the basement in their quest for electric torches. Missy also took the opportunity to creep up to the second floor to check her own phones, to make sure that this was just an isolated incident and not a continuation of the violence that’d already rocked the streets for most of the afternoon.

 

“The storage lockers? Yeah, I can meet you there, just let me—” Taylor’s voice cut off as Missy entered the room. 

 

“Don’t mind me,” the preteen reassured her. “Just getting my phone, and then I’m out of your hair.”

 

“How much did you hear?” Taylor demanded.

 

“Enough to tell you that you really shouldn’t be leaving the house until we find out what just happened to the street and get power back,” Missy answered.

 

“Damn it,” Taylor said, then slung her backpack over her shoulder and leapt out of the bedroom window.

 

Missy blinked at the open window for several seconds, then retrieved her phone and went downstairs. “Mom?” she called down the basement stairs.

 

“Yes, honey?” Samantha replied.

 

“Taylor just jumped out of the window and ran off into the night.” 

 

There was a sound of booted feet furiously falling against creaking wood. “She  _ what _ ?” Missy leapt back as Danny practically burst through the floor, an old lantern in hand. He loomed over her like a tree in a tempest, branches flailing as he demanded to know, “Where did she go?!”

 

“Danny, you need to calm down,” Samantha said, taking a much slower ascent from the basement.

 

“Calm down? My daughter just ran off in the middle of the night during a power outage and maybe an explosion! Why would she do that? What is going on tonight?!” The man set his lantern down, hurrying to the kitchen. “We need to call the police, or get out there and look for her, or—”

 

“I can go get her,” Missy spoke up. 

 

Danny shook his head. “No, absolutely not, you are staying right here with your mother, and I will go and—”

 

“Mister Hebert,” Missy interrupted. “It’s fine. I’ll be safe. I’ll find Taylor and bring her back.” 

 

“Missy, please, now is not the time to play hero,” Danny said, not noticing Samantha’s wince and beginning to rifle through the closet at the front door for a coat. 

 

Missy crossed her arms then met her mother’s eyes. “Tell him,” she said. 

 

“What?” Samantha asked.

 

“Tell him,” Missy repeated, and realization dawned upon her mother.

 

“Are you sure?” she asked.

 

“You love him, right? Then he should know. Tell him. I’m going to go after Taylor, and I’ll bring her back.” Vista didn’t wait for either adult to respond, electing to let herself out via the front door and shrinking it behind her before taking off down the street and paging Aegis from her phone. 

 

_ Civ fam problems, emrgncy calls only pls. _

 

Thankfully the explosion had warned most people off the streets. That coupled with the late hour meant Vista had free reign over the contours of Brockton Bay. Lengths of pavement shortened on a whim, and sidewalks inched to meet each other as she traversed the city, making a beeline towards the storage lockers that Taylor had mentioned on the phone.

 

The only problem was that Vista didn’t actually know where these lockers were. 

 

She assumed Taylor’s friend didn’t mean the very nice storage units in Downtown, but that hardly limited her search; the miles of disused and repurposed warehouses were a staple in the more run down parts of the city. So she bounced around the metropolis, her powers and the lack of people outside at night helping her speed through neighborhoods and boroughs faster than any kind of motorized transportation. Eventually a quick glance at a navigation app reminded her about the storage units by the Trainyard, prompting her with one final destination to search for Mr. Hebert’s wayward daughter. 

 

The Trainyard was not a place that Vista visited often. It wasn’t somewhere that the Wards patrolled, and more importantly, wasn’t somewhere she considered spending a lot of time at. The sun had fully set when Vista arrived. Her worries about needing to spend a lot of time searching the place was unfounded, as well. She followed the trails of soot, rubble, and big holes, eventually reaching a hallway made of storage units that had a huge hole for her to step through.

 

The only word Vista could describe it as was a massacre. A round dozen of still bodies sporting ABB colors were spread around scorch marks and bullet holes plastered into the floor and walls, with distinct spatters of dried or drying blood adorning the spaces in between. Two costumed bodies lay on the ground, unmoving. Vista spotted a cheap looking plastic dog mask as well as a broken motorcycle helmet. Her kinda-sorta stepsister stood in the middle of it all, costumed in a mottled earthy colored suit lined with carapace and paneling, her mask held loosely in her hand. 

 

Taylor’s mask fell out of her hands as Vista rounded the corner, clattering against the pavement. She turned around, eyes wide but unfocusing and mouth hanging loosely open.

 

“Taylor?” Missy said cautiously, causing Taylor to jump and whirl around to face her. Something in her head clicked when she saw Missy, lending focus back to her eyes.

 

“Please don’t tell my dad,” she whispered.


	9. Chapter 9

Danny Hebert’s world was falling apart.

 

It had fallen apart once before; in a night that seemed an eternity ago now, leaving him with nought but memories of a shattered windshield and the shrill whale song cry of sirens in a bumpy ambulance. He thought himself at his lowest then, swept up in a current of despair that dragged him down a waterfall of hazy tears and foamy routine from which he resurfaced every once in a while when the stars aligned. It’d taken some time for him to find land once more, done with the help of every piece of driftwood and flotsam that came his way; friends, work, and more recently, Samantha, helping him struggle to keep his face above water and claw his way back to land.

 

He felt the torrent’s call once more tonight. 

 

“There...there must be a misunderstanding,” he said, shaking his head as if the action could deny the facts in front of him. His companion behind the one way mirror shrugged. 

 

“She was found with her costume, matching the one that was reported with the Undersiders just earlier today, surrounded by several members of the ABB as well as civilians. We brought her in a little over an hour ago,” Deputy Director Renick relayed the facts one more time to him, but the words didn’t resonate with his thoughts. His Taylor? A criminal? A  _ supervillain _ ?

 

“I don’t understand,” Danny said, shaking his head.

 

“There is nothing to misunderstand, Mr. Hebert. The facts are the facts,” Renick replied.

 

“Could...could I talk to her?” Danny asked.

 

“We were hoping you could, actually. We were told she has information pertaining to the bombings that happened tonight, but she hasn’t responded to anyone since being brought in.” Director Renick lead him out the room and a few steps down the hall.

 

He felt trepidation at the gate, the metal door looming over him. What to say? How to say it? An apology? A demand? A beseechment for answers? Danny didn’t know. He let his hand rest on the doorknob as a hundred and one different conversations played themselves out in his mind, but found himself unable to pick one.

 

He pushed the door open. 

 

She looked...different. He’d like to think it was just the costume. Danny never imagined he’d ever see his daughter dressed in an honest to god costume outside of Halloween. Even if he did, he always imagined it as more Armsmaster or Miss Militia and less...this. This, being of dark silks and mottled carapace, of jagged lines and the faint smell of ash and dust. They didn’t suit his daughter, those things. Her mask sat on the table, next to her neatly folded—and handcuffed—hands. Danny sat down across the lengthy table from his daughter. She didn’t meet his eyes.

 

“Taylor?” Danny asked. There wasn’t an audible response from his daughter, just a shuffle as she turned in her seat to face him, eyes still downcast.

 

She was different, Danny realized, and it wasn’t just because of the costume. Gone was his Taylor of yesteryear, with her frenetic energy and bright smile, and wild, inquisitive eyes. Gone was the daughter he thought came home every day and ran excitedly through his memories. She held herself tightly, tension threaded through her shoulders and arms, and she let her hair hang to hide the edges of her face. She had changed, Danny knew, from when Annette died and she began high school, but seeing her, here and now, helped him realize that the change was more than he imagined.

 

“...How bad was it?” he asked after a pregnant moment of silence.

 

That was evidently not the question Taylor was expecting. “What?”

 

“Everything,” Danny said, finding some spark of anger—mostly at himself—to lend steel to his voice. “After mom. School. Me. All of it. How bad was it?”

 

“Dad—”

 

“How bad?”

 

Taylor turned her chair away. “It’s not your fault.”

 

“I am sitting in a PRT interrogation room after a bomb went off on my street, my girlfriend is telling me her daughter has powers, while  _ my _ daughter is dressed like a cape and I have people tell me she is a  _ supervillain _ in the next room, Taylor.” He didn’t notice shoving himself to standing, nor his voice rising. “Like hell it isn’t my fault!”

 

“You didn’t know—”

 

“But I damn well should have!” It was the crash of his palm against the table that sobered his anger. Danny clenched tight his fist and eyes and sat down. “I damn well should have.”

 

Danny wondered where the Deputy Director went, if he was still watching them. Then he realized he didn’t give a damn who saw except the person right in front of him.

 

“I am sorry,” Danny apologized.

 

“You’re angry. You’re allowed to be angry. It’s okay,” Taylor said. 

 

“I’m not angry.”

 

“You stood up and began to shout.”

 

Well. Hard to deny that. Instead of addressing it, Danny decided to switch tracks. “You have powers.”

 

“You also hit the table really hard.”

 

“You have powers.”

 

“And knocked your chair over.”

 

“You have powers.”

 

“...I have powers,” Taylor acknowledged. 

 

“Since when? How did you get them?” Danny demanded.

 

“The hospital.”

 

“What are they?”

 

Taylor turned her hands over so that her palms faced Danny. He watched as a singular ant crawled from the hem of her sleeve to the tip of her finger before crossing the table to him. He reached out and let it continue onto his palm, where it stayed, stock still. He let the ant fall to the table. 

 

“How?” he repeated.

 

“I can just control them, it’s as easy as breath—”

 

“No, not that. How did you get them?”

 

“I already told you.”

 

“You told me when, Taylor. Not how. Not who.”

 

Her quiet folded the conversation. Father and daughter began their retreat from this rare outburst of conversation to more recognizable and calmer pastures.

 

Danny resisted. “It was what happened at school, wasn’t it? The ‘prank’?”

 

“Dad.”

 

“Taylor, please, I just want to understand what is happening.”

 

“They haven’t already told you everything?”

 

“They’ve told me nothing.”

 

“Just the fact that I am a supervillain.” 

 

Danny stood up. He didn’t know whether he wanted to pace or shout or something else. Instead he focused on keeping his breath even. “Are you?”

 

“Would my answer matter?”

 

“Of course it would, Taylor.”

 

“How?”

 

Danny sat back down and brought his hands together. “If your answer is yes,” he began. “I will proceed to ask you why you felt the need to steal several hundred thousand dollars and destroy public property, and after you answer me, I will leave this room and give Alan a call and ask him to recommend me a lawyer far better than he is. I will then hire this lawyer and the both of us together will make sure you stay out of jail. If the answer is no, then we will immediately walk out of this room together to the Deputy Director of the PRT next door and explain how this is all a huge misunderstanding and that you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then we will go home and finish the conversation we started at dinner.”

 

Taylor laughed. Danny hated how brittle and hollow it sounded. “That easy, huh?”

 

“Of course not,” Danny answered. “It won’t be easy, but I need you to understand that I will be here with you every step of the way. I just need you to tell me what you want, Taylor.”

 

“Even if I tell you what I want is to stay out of jail because I was completely serious about being a supervillain?”

 

Danny nodded without hesitation.

\--

Like many people, Samantha had plenty of opinions about PRT ENE Director Emily Piggot. It was hard not to; the woman was polarizing in many unexpected ways. Half the city loved her frankly callous and at times even caustic attitude when it came to defending Brockton Bay from its multifarious villains, the other half was of the mind that these things needed a much more delicate touch, and that her uncompromising behavior caused as many problems as it solved. Samantha was solidly on the side of the latter tonight, considering that she’d mobilized the Wards in reaction to what was shaping up to be a terror campaign perpetrated by the ABB in the middle of the city. She didn’t even have a chance to see her daughter in between her leaving to find Taylor and being sent back into the fray once more.

 

Even so, “Your daughter is a villain, Mr. Hebert.” was not the opener that Samantha expected the Director to go for. She gripped Danny’s hand before he could throw himself on the woman even as conflicting cries of, “How dare you,” and “No, I’m not,” filled the now cramped conference-turned-interrogation room.

 

The Director weathered the tumult as a statue. On some level, Samantha was impressed by her impassivity. On another, one that cared for Danny, she thought it disrespectful and downright rude.

 

“Your daughter has committed several counts of grand larceny, destruction of public property, and unlawful assault with a parahuman power, Mr. Hebert. I fail to see where your indignation comes from,” Piggot continued after the din subsided. 

 

“I didn’t touch anyone with my bugs, only scared them,” Taylor said. 

 

“Kid Win’s numerous bee stings would disagree with you, Ms. Hebert. As would several security guards employed by the Brockton Bay Central Bank.” 

 

Taylor looked away. “I didn’t mean to sting him that many times.”

 

“I’m sure he’s very thankful of your considerations.”

 

“Look, just ask Armsmaster, okay? I told him that I joined the Undersiders so I could get information on their boss.”

 

“Convenient, then, that he’s currently helping the city weather a terror crisis. One that you seem to have a direct connection to.”

 

“I am not liking the insinuations you are putting on my daughter here, Director,” Danny said.

 

“They are not insinuations, Mr. Hebert. You daughter has broken the law—several laws, I might add—and now you expect me to simply brush her actions aside simply because she claims to have been committing crime with good intentions?” Piggot countered.

 

Sensing anger beginning to course through Danny once more, Samantha interrupted. “If I may, Director,” she said before the shouting could begin anew.

 

Piggot narrowed her eyes. “Yes, Miss Biron?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know how much my word is worth to you, but I do believe Taylor here had good intentions for doing the things she did. While that may not excuse her actions, I do not think granting Danny’s wishes are that absurd.”

 

“He wishes I set a criminal free,” Piggot said.

 

“He wishes his daughter be granted a second chance,” Samantha argued. “And you and I both know that the Wards and the Protectorate harbor more than a few people in this very same situation. Even Missy caused a bit of property damage when she first got her powers.”

 

“A collapsed roof and mangled manhole covers is a far cry from robbing an armored car.”

 

“I don’t want to join the Wards,” Taylor muttered. 

 

Danny reached over and began rubbing circles in her back. “It’s better than jail, Taylor,” he whispered.

 

Samantha did not interject, simply waiting for the Director’s response. She mulled it over for a long while, lacing her fingers together and staring at Samantha. Samantha wasn’t sure what would give first, the Director, Danny’s temper, or maybe the room would be blown apart by the sheer tension ebbing off of both sides of the room. Before the judge, jury, and executioner made her decision, however, there came a knocking at the door. Two short, solid raps that excised expectations of a calamitous confrontation and deflated the room.

 

“Come in,” Piggot called.

 

Deputy Director Renick entered, looking a little flustered and out of breath. He hurried to Piggot’s side.

 

“What is it?” she asked.

 

“Shadow Stalker, ma’am, is dead.”


End file.
